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Value Proposition Canvas Explained (With Real Examples)

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Value Props: Create a Product People Will Actually Buy

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If you've ever seen an early 2000s infomercial, you've seen the marketing of pains and gains in action.

Today, advertisers generally assume that the majority of people don't need things like a non-stick pan or a giant cupcake explained to them. But at the turn of the century, commercials didn't leave a single thing to the imagination. They explained everything about everything, in great detail and at even greater volume.

Grow your business with marketing automation

While these commercials look patently ridiculous to us today, they're also great examples of pains and gains in marketing. Each commercial began by asking viewers if they had ever experienced some sort of problem or lackluster experience, then presented its product as the solution. Hate picking up your dog's poop? Try the PooTrap. Love salad but hate making it? The Slap Chop is for you. No matter what the industry, each infomercial started the same way, with an explicit description of the problem-and what value the product was designed to bring.

Even if it's no longer en vogue to literally shout your product pitch directly at your customers, the concept of pains and gains is still a powerful tool used by product developers and marketers. Here, we'll discuss what pains and gains are, how to identify them, and how to apply them effectively to create and sell your product.

What are pains and gains?

Pains and gains are ways of looking at customer needs based on how a product or service can solve an existing customer problem (pain) and how a customer's life stands to benefit from a product or service (gain).

Every business has two types of customers:

1. Those who come to the table with pains (problems or obstacles that they need solved by a product or service).

2. Those who are drawn in by the promise of gains (products that will improve or enhance an aspect of their lives).

The products that provide these improvements or solutions can be thought of as "gain creators" and "pain relievers."

A non-stick pan is a pain reliever, designed to address the problem of, and I quote, "the nightmare of your sticky pans!" Though the makers of the Big Top Cupcake would tell you their product was also designed to alleviate the pain of "looking like a fool when your cakes aren't cool," an enormous cupcake is pretty obviously a gain creator-it takes something that's already good and makes it even better.

How pains and gains inform the value proposition statement

The purpose of the value proposition statement is to summarize exactly how your product benefits your customer. In other words, it's a short explanation of what pain and/or gain the product addresses and how that provides value to the customer.

Don't phone it in on writing your value statement. A vague proposition statement will lead to uninspiring investor pitches, poorly targeted marketing, and in some cases, the failure of the product completely. But with the help of some quality pains and gains research, you can craft a value statement that resonates with your targets and helps your product and promotional material resonate, too.

How to find your customers' pains and gains

So how do you actually identify your customers' pains and gains? You need to put yourself in their shoes. Spend some time with your target demographic; if you already have a customer base, collect customer feedback with surveys and tap your customer-facing team for information about your audience's biggest problems, complaints, compliments, and favorite features.

Ask yourself what your customer:

Thinks and feels: What do they care about? What worries them? What excites them?

Sees: What is their environment like? What do they encounter regularly?

Hears: What do their friends say? What media messaging do they consume? Whose opinions do they value?

Says and does: What opinions do they share with others? How do they behave?

Create an empathy map

After you have a good amount of information on your customer, you can create a version of an empathy map that's specifically tailored to finding pains and gains.

Record what you learn about your customer in the four upper quadrants of the empathy map. To optimize CX, you can pair this map with your ideal customer profile (ICP), which should contain more concrete information about your target customer-their age, location, occupation, household size, education level, and so on. The details from your ICP can provide valuable insights for your empathy map as well. For example, your customer's occupation probably influences what they see day-to-day and the types of people they listen to most.

When the top half of your empathy map is complete, step back and consider your customer as a whole. Ask yourself:

If you were this person, what would your pains and gains be?

What are the most annoying things this person encounters regularly?

What are this person's joys and priorities? What could make those things even better, or make it easier for this person to enjoy them more?

Are there any conflicts between quadrants that might lead to problems? Does this person's thoughts conflict with their actions? Does this person see or hear things that clash with their convictions?

Matching products to pains and gains

Knowing what your customers' pains and gains are won't do much unless you know how to turn that knowledge into useful information. There are two roles that benefit most from understanding pains and gains: product developers and marketers.

For both of these roles, the goal is to be able to articulate how something alleviates a customer pain or provides a customer gain. From a product perspective, this knowledge is applied to the development of new products or the addition of updated features to existing products. Once those products are created, marketers need to understand how the product addresses customer pains and/or gains so that they can create promotional material that clearly and convincingly states how the product will provide the customers that value.

Using pains and gains to find product fit

When a product is well-designed to address a customer's pains and/or gains, this is called a "fit." In order to find a good product fit, you need to make sure of two things:

1. You have an accurate understanding of your customers' pains and gains.

2. You have a product that effectively addresses those customer demands.

Of course, simply addressing any pain or gain isn't enough to put your product on the path to success, since not all pains and gains are worth spending money to solve.

For example, although the Snuggie performed well for a while as a novelty product, most people aren't so dissatisfied with blankets that it's worth it to them to spend money on what is essentially a backward bathrobe. (That said, Snuggie is still in business, so clearly they still have a target market. But when you Google "Snuggie," one of the first search suggestions is, "Is Snuggie still a thing?" so the product definitely doesn't enjoy the same popularity it once had.)

One of the surest ways to make sure you're targeting a compelling pain and/or gain is to consider your target customers' jobs-to-be-done.

What are customer jobs-to-be-done?

Much like a non-stick pan or a giant cupcake, customer jobs-to-be-done are fairly self-explanatory: they're the things the customer needs to do.

To be clear, we're not talking about the customer's occupation here; we're thinking about the customer's to-do list. (The main reason that customer jobs-to-be-done is written out with hyphens in this way is to differentiate between what we're talking about and the actual career jobs the customer holds.)

In the same way that different customer demographics will have different pains and gains, jobs-to-be-done also vary depending on who you're targeting. For example, if you're marketing a desktop computer:

Office equipment managers' jobs-to-be-done include obtaining equipment for new employees and maintaining things in good condition.

A full-time work-from-home employee's jobs-to-be-done include the tasks associated with their occupation and any household jobs they might use a computer to accomplish.

A college student's jobs-to-be-done include research, writing, note-taking, and printing assignments.

A gamer's jobs-to-be-done include high-bandwidth downloading, running programs that require a lot of memory, live streaming, and video and audio recording.

Using jobs-to-be-done to find product fit

By considering jobs-to-be-done along with your customers' pains and gains, you can get a better understanding of which problems they prioritize solving or which experiences they're most interested in enhancing. When you're choosing pains and gains to target, the closer each pain/gain is to the customer's jobs-to-be-done, the more compelled they will be to see your product's value.

Let's use the desktop computer again as an example. If you're targeting desktop users as a whole, you might target common pains like slow processing speeds, poor connectivity, and clunky user interfaces. But if you look at your audience's jobs-to-be-done, you'll be able to get more specific with different marketing materials-slow processing speeds are an even bigger problem for gamers than for college students, while an office manager might not be as concerned with remote audio/video as a work-from-home employee would be.

Match customer needs with product benefits using a value map

When it comes time to put all of these various elements together, the best way to do so is with a value map. A value map combines customer pains, gains, and jobs to be done with a product's capacity to provide pain relief and gain creation.

On the right side of the value map, you'll transfer the information from your empathy map to the corresponding gains, pains, and jobs-to-be-done sections.

In the top and bottom sections of the left side, you'll write down things that could create or increase these gains and things that could alleviate these pains.

With all of this information recorded, you can now consider what products and services will most effectively provide as many of these gain creators and pain relievers as possible. That goes in the left-most section.

On the marketing side, you'll fill out this information the same way, but in your case, the product or service will have already been created. Instead of coming up with a product to address these customer needs, your job is to come up with ways to show potential customers what a good fit your product is by demonstrating how its benefits correspond to their needs.

Customer pains and gains will evolve

Pains and gains aren't something you identify once and then stick with forever. Customers' wants and needs are always changing, and brands that aren't working with consistently updated customer data run the risk of investing a lot of time and energy into a product that addresses issues their customers no longer have.

That's why it's important to create systems that can capture and organize customer information on a consistent basis. To get some ideas on how to simplify your data collection process, check out how a real estate company keeps up with customers in one of the most quickly evolving industries using customer data automation.

Pains and gains FAQ

Time for a review-here are some answers to common questions about pains and gains so that you can understand your customers and properly meet their needs.

What is the pains and gains method?

The pains and gains method is a way of approaching customer needs. Customers are divided into two categories: those who are driven by the potential to benefit from a product or service (the gain seekers) and those who are driven by the potential that a product or service will solve a problem or help them overcome an obstacle (the pain evaders). Once you know the pains and gains associated with your product or service, it's much easier to find a product fit.

What is an example of a gain and a pain?

A common example of a customer gain is convenience. For instance, a coffee maker with a programmable brewing mode gives the customer the benefit of having a fresh pot of rise 'n' shine ready for them in the morning as soon as they're up and getting ready for work.

Customer pains are often obstacles that keep them from doing something-a problem that a product or service can solve. For example, if someone wants espresso drinks but doesn't know how to make them and doesn't want to pay $7.50 at a coffee shop every time they need a jolt, an automatic espresso machine can make lattes for them at home.

What is the difference between a pain reliever and gain creator?

A pain reliever is a product or service that solves a problem for a customer or helps them do or achieve something they couldn't have on their own. On the flipside, a gain creator is a product or service that gives a customer a benefit that in some way improves their life. People come to pain relievers to address existing problems, while people come to gain creators for the promise of experiencing a positive change that simply adds value to their lives.
This article was originally published in June 2022 by Amanda Pell. It was most recently updated in August 2023.

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Pains and gains: How to meet customer needs | Zapier

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Understanding customer pains and gains can help you deliver on your unique customers' needs. Here's how to understand the concept and apply it to your business.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
If you've ever seen an early 2000s infomercial, you've seen the marketing of pains and gains in action.

Today, advertisers generally assume that the majority of people don't need things like a non-stick pan or a giant cupcake explained to them. But at the turn of the century, commercials didn't leave a single thing to the imagination. They explained everything about everything, in great detail and at even greater volume.

Grow your business with marketing automation

While these commercials look patently ridiculous to us today, they're also great examples of pains and gains in marketing. Each commercial began by asking viewers if they had ever experienced some sort of problem or lackluster experience, then presented its product as the solution. Hate picking up your dog's poop? Try the PooTrap. Love salad but hate making it? The Slap Chop is for you. No matter what the industry, each infomercial started the same way, with an explicit description of the problem-and what value the product was designed to bring.

Even if it's no longer en vogue to literally shout your product pitch directly at your customers, the concept of pains and gains is still a powerful tool used by product developers and marketers. Here, we'll discuss what pains and gains are, how to identify them, and how to apply them effectively to create and sell your product.

What are pains and gains?

Pains and gains are ways of looking at customer needs based on how a product or service can solve an existing customer problem (pain) and how a customer's life stands to benefit from a product or service (gain).

Every business has two types of customers:

1. Those who come to the table with pains (problems or obstacles that they need solved by a product or service).

2. Those who are drawn in by the promise of gains (products that will improve or enhance an aspect of their lives).

The products that provide these improvements or solutions can be thought of as "gain creators" and "pain relievers."

A non-stick pan is a pain reliever, designed to address the problem of, and I quote, "the nightmare of your sticky pans!" Though the makers of the Big Top Cupcake would tell you their product was also designed to alleviate the pain of "looking like a fool when your cakes aren't cool," an enormous cupcake is pretty obviously a gain creator-it takes something that's already good and makes it even better.

How pains and gains inform the value proposition statement

The purpose of the value proposition statement is to summarize exactly how your product benefits your customer. In other words, it's a short explanation of what pain and/or gain the product addresses and how that provides value to the customer.

Don't phone it in on writing your value statement. A vague proposition statement will lead to uninspiring investor pitches, poorly targeted marketing, and in some cases, the failure of the product completely. But with the help of some quality pains and gains research, you can craft a value statement that resonates with your targets and helps your product and promotional material resonate, too.

How to find your customers' pains and gains

So how do you actually identify your customers' pains and gains? You need to put yourself in their shoes. Spend some time with your target demographic; if you already have a customer base, collect customer feedback with surveys and tap your customer-facing team for information about your audience's biggest problems, complaints, compliments, and favorite features.

Ask yourself what your customer:

Thinks and feels: What do they care about? What worries them? What excites them?

Sees: What is their environment like? What do they encounter regularly?

Hears: What do their friends say? What media messaging do they consume? Whose opinions do they value?

Says and does: What opinions do they share with others? How do they behave?

Create an empathy map

After you have a good amount of information on your customer, you can create a version of an empathy map that's specifically tailored to finding pains and gains.

Record what you learn about your customer in the four upper quadrants of the empathy map. To optimize CX, you can pair this map with your ideal customer profile (ICP), which should contain more concrete information about your target customer-their age, location, occupation, household size, education level, and so on. The details from your ICP can provide valuable insights for your empathy map as well. For example, your customer's occupation probably influences what they see day-to-day and the types of people they listen to most.

When the top half of your empathy map is complete, step back and consider your customer as a whole. Ask yourself:

If you were this person, what would your pains and gains be?

What are the most annoying things this person encounters regularly?

What are this person's joys and priorities? What could make those things even better, or make it easier for this person to enjoy them more?

Are there any conflicts between quadrants that might lead to problems? Does this person's thoughts conflict with their actions? Does this person see or hear things that clash with their convictions?

Matching products to pains and gains

Knowing what your customers' pains and gains are won't do much unless you know how to turn that knowledge into useful information. There are two roles that benefit most from understanding pains and gains: product developers and marketers.

For both of these roles, the goal is to be able to articulate how something alleviates a customer pain or provides a customer gain. From a product perspective, this knowledge is applied to the development of new products or the addition of updated features to existing products. Once those products are created, marketers need to understand how the product addresses customer pains and/or gains so that they can create promotional material that clearly and convincingly states how the product will provide the customers that value.

Using pains and gains to find product fit

When a product is well-designed to address a customer's pains and/or gains, this is called a "fit." In order to find a good product fit, you need to make sure of two things:

1. You have an accurate understanding of your customers' pains and gains.

2. You have a product that effectively addresses those customer demands.

Of course, simply addressing any pain or gain isn't enough to put your product on the path to success, since not all pains and gains are worth spending money to solve.

For example, although the Snuggie performed well for a while as a novelty product, most people aren't so dissatisfied with blankets that it's worth it to them to spend money on what is essentially a backward bathrobe. (That said, Snuggie is still in business, so clearly they still have a target market. But when you Google "Snuggie," one of the first search suggestions is, "Is Snuggie still a thing?" so the product definitely doesn't enjoy the same popularity it once had.)

One of the surest ways to make sure you're targeting a compelling pain and/or gain is to consider your target customers' jobs-to-be-done.

What are customer jobs-to-be-done?

Much like a non-stick pan or a giant cupcake, customer jobs-to-be-done are fairly self-explanatory: they're the things the customer needs to do.

To be clear, we're not talking about the customer's occupation here; we're thinking about the customer's to-do list. (The main reason that customer jobs-to-be-done is written out with hyphens in this way is to differentiate between what we're talking about and the actual career jobs the customer holds.)

In the same way that different customer demographics will have different pains and gains, jobs-to-be-done also vary depending on who you're targeting. For example, if you're marketing a desktop computer:

Office equipment managers' jobs-to-be-done include obtaining equipment for new employees and maintaining things in good condition.

A full-time work-from-home employee's jobs-to-be-done include the tasks associated with their occupation and any household jobs they might use a computer to accomplish.

A college student's jobs-to-be-done include research, writing, note-taking, and printing assignments.

A gamer's jobs-to-be-done include high-bandwidth downloading, running programs that require a lot of memory, live streaming, and video and audio recording.

Using jobs-to-be-done to find product fit

By considering jobs-to-be-done along with your customers' pains and gains, you can get a better understanding of which problems they prioritize solving or which experiences they're most interested in enhancing. When you're choosing pains and gains to target, the closer each pain/gain is to the customer's jobs-to-be-done, the more compelled they will be to see your product's value.

Let's use the desktop computer again as an example. If you're targeting desktop users as a whole, you might target common pains like slow processing speeds, poor connectivity, and clunky user interfaces. But if you look at your audience's jobs-to-be-done, you'll be able to get more specific with different marketing materials-slow processing speeds are an even bigger problem for gamers than for college students, while an office manager might not be as concerned with remote audio/video as a work-from-home employee would be.

Match customer needs with product benefits using a value map

When it comes time to put all of these various elements together, the best way to do so is with a value map. A value map combines customer pains, gains, and jobs to be done with a product's capacity to provide pain relief and gain creation.

On the right side of the value map, you'll transfer the information from your empathy map to the corresponding gains, pains, and jobs-to-be-done sections.

In the top and bottom sections of the left side, you'll write down things that could create or increase these gains and things that could alleviate these pains.

With all of this information recorded, you can now consider what products and services will most effectively provide as many of these gain creators and pain relievers as possible. That goes in the left-most section.

On the marketing side, you'll fill out this information the same way, but in your case, the product or service will have already been created. Instead of coming up with a product to address these customer needs, your job is to come up with ways to show potential customers what a good fit your product is by demonstrating how its benefits correspond to their needs.

Customer pains and gains will evolve

Pains and gains aren't something you identify once and then stick with forever. Customers' wants and needs are always changing, and brands that aren't working with consistently updated customer data run the risk of investing a lot of time and energy into a product that addresses issues their customers no longer have.

That's why it's important to create systems that can capture and organize customer information on a consistent basis. To get some ideas on how to simplify your data collection process, check out how a real estate company keeps up with customers in one of the most quickly evolving industries using customer data automation.

Pains and gains FAQ

Time for a review-here are some answers to common questions about pains and gains so that you can understand your customers and properly meet their needs.

What is the pains and gains method?

The pains and gains method is a way of approaching customer needs. Customers are divided into two categories: those who are driven by the potential to benefit from a product or service (the gain seekers) and those who are driven by the potential that a product or service will solve a problem or help them overcome an obstacle (the pain evaders). Once you know the pains and gains associated with your product or service, it's much easier to find a product fit.

What is an example of a gain and a pain?

A common example of a customer gain is convenience. For instance, a coffee maker with a programmable brewing mode gives the customer the benefit of having a fresh pot of rise 'n' shine ready for them in the morning as soon as they're up and getting ready for work.

Customer pains are often obstacles that keep them from doing something-a problem that a product or service can solve. For example, if someone wants espresso drinks but doesn't know how to make them and doesn't want to pay $7.50 at a coffee shop every time they need a jolt, an automatic espresso machine can make lattes for them at home.

What is the difference between a pain reliever and gain creator?

A pain reliever is a product or service that solves a problem for a customer or helps them do or achieve something they couldn't have on their own. On the flipside, a gain creator is a product or service that gives a customer a benefit that in some way improves their life. People come to pain relievers to address existing problems, while people come to gain creators for the promise of experiencing a positive change that simply adds value to their lives.
This article was originally published in June 2022 by Amanda Pell. It was most recently updated in August 2023.

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Pains and gains: How to meet customer needs | Zapier

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Understanding customer pains and gains can help you deliver on your unique customers' needs. Here's how to understand the concept and apply it to your business.

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Applying the Value Proposition Canvas (Osterwalder & Pigneur, 1999) to the Harvard University website "Canvas" was a novel and insightful exercise. By applying the mindset laid out in IDEO's " The Field Guide to Human-Centered Design", please see below the output of my analysis:

These were my main insights generated during the exercise:

Insight 1: Do not underestimate the role of social and emotional jobs: During my first draft, I realized that I solely focused on the functional jobs of a student, which is not necessarily a comprehensive view. According to Osterwalder & Pigneur (1999), we need to also look at social and emotional jobs. For a student this could be to "feel comfortable and confident" and to be "integrated into a larger university community". I made sure to add these points in my second iteration.

Insight 2: Make sure to tie it all together: The biggest value-add for me was at the end of the exercise, when mapping the value proposition gain creators/pain relievers to the customer gains and pains. This is where I was able to identify strengths but also potential pitfalls of Canvas. For instance, I think Canvas does a solid job in providing structure and tools for time management. However, it fails to address some of the social/emotional jobs of a student.

Insight 3: Ethics matter: we need to value impact over form: Last but not least, I think it is essential to take a step back from the exercise and take into account the broader mission of design. According to Mike Monteiro's "A Designer's Code of Ethics", the output of a product or service should hold priority over its form. This is an insight that will inform my future decisions in design processes.

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Female leadership in AI and VC: My learnings

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Applying the Value Proposition Canvas - My insights

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Applying the Value Proposition Canvas (Osterwalder & Pigneur, 1999) to the Harvard University website "Canvas" was a novel and insightful exercise. By applying the mindset laid out in IDEO's "The...

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Value Proposition Canvas is a business model tool that helps you make sure that a company's product or service is positioned around customers' values and needs. The tool has been created by Alexander Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur, and Alan Smith. The same authors of the Business Model Canvas, aiming to map the value perceived by customers. The primary purpose is, therefore, to create a fit between the product and market. For this to happen, the Value Proposition Canvas explores more deeply these two (out of the nine) blocks from the Business Model Canvas: Customer Segment and Value Proposition.

What are the advantages of using the Value Proposition Canvas?

Understanding the customer, with their needs and expectations;

Developing a product in accordance with what your customer need and want;

Comparing a product you already have with the user's need;

Finding your product-market fit;

Avoiding producing something nobody wants,

Saving time and money.

What is Value Proposition Canvas like?

As said before, Value Proposition Canvas is made up of only two blocks - Value Proposition and Customer Segment. They are the core of the business model because they focus on "What" and "To whom". In other words, how your company delivers value to your audience. The canvas is divided into two sides: on the right side, it's the Client Profile. And that is divided into Jobs-to-be-done, Pains, and Gains. On the left side, it's the Value Proposition, also subdivided into three: Products & Services, Gain Creators, and Pain Relievers. Let's check each one out:

Client Profile

This is about what your customer is trying to do. You have to include all tasks customers are trying to perform, the problems they are trying to solve, and the needs they want to satisfy. It's also important to note down the frequency and the importance of each job, and all the different roles the customer have to play, and in what contexts. To fulfill this step, you may ask yourself:

What functional tasks is my customer trying to perform? (day by day tasks, problems at work, etc.)

What social tasks is my customer trying to accomplish? (get a promotion, gain status, have a network, etc.)

What emotional tasks is my customer trying to complete? (get in shape, feel good, feel motivated, etc.).

What basic needs do they need/want to have satisfied? (communication, sex, hygiene, etc.).

This one encompasses everything that annoys your customer while they are performing their jobs-to-be-done, such as negative experiences and emotions, challenges, risks involved, financial costs, mistakes, and consequences, etc. Remember to classify each pain as severe or light and note down how often it takes place as well. To complete this step, you can make some questions:

What is expensive for my customer? (regarding time, cost, effort, etc.)

What makes my customer feel bad? (frustrations, disappointments, failures, physical pain, etc.)

What are the main difficulties and challenges of my customer's faces? (physical, intellectual or emotional limitations to do something, resistance, understanding certain situations, etc.)

How current solutions are leaving to be desired for my customer? (bad performance, much effort, lack of functionality, defects, etc.)

What are the negative consequences for my customer? (losses of power, status, money, time, trust, etc.)

What risks is my customer afraid of? (financial, social, technical, etc.)

What is keeping my customer awake at night? (concerns, challenges, debts, bad health, etc.)

What are the most common mistakes my customer makes? (creating expectations, misunderstandings, errors in use, etc.)

What is preventing my customer from adopting solutions? (investment, learning curve, resistance to changes, etc.)

They are all the benefits your customer expects or wishes - or even something that would surprise them positively -, whether they are functional, emotional, social or financial. In short, everything that delight them and make their life easier, more joyful or more successful. You may rank each gain by relevance and indicate the frequency of them. To do so, you can follow some questions, such as:

What kinds of savings would make my customer happy? (time, money, energy, etc.)

What results do my customer expect? Which ones can mesmerize them? (quality level, profits and gains, savings and improvements, etc.)

What current solutions enchant my customer? (functionalities, performance, quality, etc.)

What can make my customer's tasks easier? (lower learning curve, more services, lower costs, etc.)

What positive consequences do my customers want? (power, status, acknowledgment, satisfaction, motivation, etc.)

What is my customer looking for? (design, guarantees, specific features, functionality, etc.)

How does my customer measure success and failure? (cost, performance, speed, quality, beauty, likes on social networks, etc.)

What would increase my customer's chances of adopting a solution? (lower investment, longer guarantee, better performance/quality/design, etc.)

It's worth remembering that you must create one profile for each customer segment. After mapping your customers' profiles, the next step is to set what value they are going to perceive with your product or service.

Value Proposition

Include all the products and services you are going to deliver. About each one, ask yourself:

Can the product/service help to accomplish any job-to-be-done, whether functional, social, emotional, needs, wishes, roles, etc.?

Is the product/service tangible, digital/virtual, or financial?

Is the product/service crucial or trivial? How relevant is it?

How often is the product/service used by my customer?

Involve how the product/service offers the customer added value, what are the benefits your product brings, and if your customer's wishes and expectations are reached. After all, how it makes your customer happier. Again, you should rank every gain your product or service creates according to relevance to your customers (if substantial or insignificant) and indicate how often it occurs. To do that, ask if your product/service:

creates savings that make your customer happy (in terms of time, money, effort, etc.);

produces results that your customer expects or that goes beyond their expectations (better level of quality, more of something, less of another);

copies or does better than current offerings that delight your customer (in relation to specific functionalities, performance, quality, etc.);

makes your customer's tasks or life easier (lower learning curve, better usability, accessibility, more built-in services, lower cost of ownership, etc.);

creates positive social consequences desired by your customer (make it look good on tape, produce or increase power, status, etc.);

does/has something the customer is looking for (good design, specific or better functionalities, etc.);

meets customers dreams (help on large goals, produce great relief, etc.);

produces positive results that match criteria of success or failure (better performance, lower cost, etc.);

makes adoption easier (reduce cost, lower investment, lower risk, higher quality, performance or design, etc.).

Describe how your product/service relieves the customer's pains. Identify if you reduce their costs, negative feelings, efforts, risks, negative consequences, mistakes... Anyway, how you make your customer feel and sleep better. It's important, also, to rank each pain, according to its intensity, to be able to understand how deeply your product/service help your customer. To help you out, ask if your product/service:

produces savings (in terms of time, money, effort, etc.);

makes your customer feel better (they end up with frustrations, discomforts, things that give headaches, etc.);

performances solutions (new features, better performance, better quality, etc.);

puts an end to the difficulties and challenges your customer faces (make things easier, help accomplish tasks, eliminate resistance, etc.);

eliminates social consequences that your customer encounters or is afraid of (losses of respect, admiration, power, confidence, status, etc.);

eliminates risks that your customer is afraid of (financial, social, technical risks, or anything else that can go very wrong);

helps your customer sleep better at night (help with major problems, reduce worries, etc.);

limits or eradicates common mistakes that your customer makes (errors of use, difficulties of use, etc.)

eliminates barriers that prevent your customer from adopting new solutions.

When to use Value Proposition Canvas?

In few words, this tool comes to facilitate the job of putting yourself in your customers' shoes and understanding their world. The final goal, as mentioned above, is to discover your Product Market Fit, through positioning products/services according to the necessities, expectations, and interests of your targeted customer. With Value Proposition Canvas, you have an overview of how your value proposition is going to impact your customer's life. The product-market fit is achieved when the products and services match most the most important gains and pains of the customer profile. Usually, the Value Proposition Canvas works properly:

At the beginning of a startup;

To restructure the sales process, in order to understand the customers better;

To add a new feature to a product, that may demand great investments, whether of time or resources (or even both);

To expand into a new market or customer segment, and you need to get to know how these new customers will receive your product/service.

It's worth remembering that fulfilling this canvas is only the first stage. It's essential to validate the hypothesis, by taking tests and getting feedback. That can help go back to the canvas and refine it. And, it is also important to highlight that the Value Proposition Canvas does not substitute the Business Model Canvas. They work better combined. One does not exclude the other.

Check it out by clicking here.

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Value Proposition Canvas is a business model tool that helps you make sure that a company's product or service is positioned around customers' values and needs. The tool has been created by Alexander Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur, and Alan Smith. The same authors of the Business Model Canvas, aiming to map the value perceived by customers.

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Your business's value proposition is arguably the most important element of your overall marketing messaging. A value proposition tells prospects why they should do business with you rather than your competitors, and makes the benefits of your products or services crystal clear from the outset.

Unfortunately, many businesses either bury their value proposition in buzzwords or trite, meaningless slogans, or don't bother highlighting it on their site and in their marketing campaigns - or they don't figure out what it is at all!

Today, we'll be looking at seven of the best unique value proposition examples we've come across. We'll go over what makes them so compelling, some ideas for developing or refining your own value proposition, and things you should bear in mind when incorporating your value proposition into your website and marketing materials. There's a fair bit to cover, so let's dive right in.

1. Uber - The Smartest Way to Get Around

Few tech companies are as polarizing or widely criticized as Uber. As one of the most vocal proponents of the empowerment offered by the so-called "gig economy," Uber has deservedly taken a lot of heat for denying its drivers the basic protections afforded to legal employees, been subject to national and even governmental scrutiny for its decision to incorporate in Bermuda to avoid its corporate tax obligations, and is generally the poster child for why everyone hates Silicon Valley's unique brand of "disruption."

One thing Uber most definitely does right, however, is its unique value proposition.
Uber's value proposition, offering uber convenience
Without explicitly saying so, Uber expertly highlights everything that sucks about taking a traditional taxi and points out how its service is superior. The simple (yet highly effective) copy above, taken from the Uber homepage, excellently conveys the simplicity and ease that lies at the heart of what makes it such a tempting service:

One tap and a car comes directly to you

Your driver knows exactly where to go

Payment is completely cashless

Everything about this directly contrasts the typical experience of getting a taxi - no phone calls to disinterested dispatchers, no painful conversations trying to explain to a stressed-out cabbie about where you need to be, and no fumbling for change or worrying you've got enough bills in your wallet. Just a fast, efficient way to get where you're going. This is reinforced by the aspirational messaging toward the top of the Uber homepage, which states that "Your day belongs to you."

Related: 13 (Really) Good Elevator Pitch Examples & Templates

At this point, it's worth comparing Uber's value proposition with that of rival company Lyft. The two companies' offerings are virtually identical, which is what makes a direct comparison of the two so interesting. Take a look at this information from the Lyft homepage:
Lyft's step-by-step value proposition
Structurally and thematically, Lyft's homepage is very similar to Uber's. However, there's some key differences here that highlight how Uber's value proposition is more clearly positioned.

Firstly, Lyft does score some points for including several step-by-step images of the Lyft experience, helping visitors visualize what taking a ride with Lyft is like. However, look at the copy for the first step of the process. It lists the three tiers of Lyft service - Lyft, Lyft Line, and Lyft Plus - but doesn't explain the difference between these service tiers, or tell the prospect why they should choose between them.

Also, while clearly explaining the final stage of the process - paying and rating the driver - this information implies that there is a final definitive action required by the user, something Uber does not. Personally, I almost always try to rate my Uber drivers (bearing in mind the oft-speculated "secret" rating of around 4.6 out of 5 that many believe serves as the performance benchmark for Uber drivers), but I don't have to. Sometimes I'll forget about it and just get on with my day - it certainly isn't required, and nor is manually paying my driver. For a service built on the notion of efficiency and convenience, this is a big deal.

Now, one could argue that Lyft does a better job of being transparent about what users can expect, an argument that definitely has merit, especially if you've ever been stung by Uber's unexpected "surge" pricing. However, for two such similar services, I'd argue that Uber's value proposition is more clearly positioned, and certainly more persuasive than that of Lyft - an important distinction if you're operating in a crowded market with several similar competitors.
Free download: Master Google Ads with our free PPC 101 guide.
2. Apple iPhone - The Experience IS the Product

Even in today's oversaturated consumer electronics marketplace, it's hard to imagine a more iconic product than the Apple iPhone. It's also difficult to imagine a product with as much competition as Apple's flagship mobile device, so what sets the iPhone apart from the (literally) hundreds of competing devices on the market?
Apple's iPhone value proposition, offering unique experience
As you'd probably expect from Apple, a firm renowned as much for its commitment to sleek, elegant product design as its actual products, Apple firmly reiterates its value proposition in the copy about its iPhone range of products - specifically, the design of the device itself, the ease of use that has been a cornerstone of Apple's design aesthetic since the launch of OS X, and the aspirational qualities that an iPhone supposedly offers the user.

This aspirational messaging is Apple's value proposition.

Take a look at the copy. Apple states that it believes a phone "should be more than a collection of features" - yet this is precisely what a smartphone is. We could sit here and poke fun at Apple's lofty design aesthetic for days (the #freejonyive hashtag on Twitter, which jokes that Apple's lead designer has been trapped in a white room for several years, is a prime example), but it's a remarkably effective approach that has helped Apple remain at the forefront of a brutally competitive market for almost a decade.
Jony Ive (#freejonyive)
Apple knows how crowded and competitive the smart device market is, so rather than focus on a specific feature - virtually none of which are unique to the iPhone or iOS - the company instead opts to focus on the experience of using an iPhone. Most companies couldn't pull off using words such as "magical" to describe using a smartphone, but Apple can.

Of course, Apple doesn't just sit on its proverbial laurels and rely on aspirational messaging to sell you on its value proposition. The official iPhone site also touches on several of the genuinely unique features of iPhone and iOS to make its case, including security:

Apple iPhone value proposition, focusing on security

Not only is this a very clever move on Apple's part (especially in the wake of the disastrous FBI San Bernardino iPhone unlocking lawsuit), but the copy matches the rest of Apple's messaging perfectly and manages to simplify an incredibly complex topic - encryption - into easily understandable language that most users can grasp and feel good about.

Apple understands that even focusing on the unique features of iPhone wouldn't be enough to distinguish the device in such a crowded market. By emphasizing the overall experience of using the device, however, Apple's value proposition is as unique as its approach to product design and aesthetics.

You can find more great Apple marketing campaigns in our epic product marketing examples post.

3. Unbounce - A/B Testing Without Tech Headaches

Moving away from the world of consumer-facing electronics and apps and veering into B2B territory, our fifth value proposition example comes from our friends at landing page optimization platform Unbounce.
Unbounce's value proposition, offering ease of use
As you might expect from a company specializing in conversion rate optimization, Unbounce's value proposition is abundantly clear from the moment you arrive on the homepage, namely the ability to build, publish, and test landing pages without any I.T. support. For many small businesses (and even larger companies), the perceived technical overhead of A/B testing is a major barrier to entry, making Unbounce's value proposition particularly appealing.

This homepage also boasts a number of other features that make the overall experience very compelling, such as a strong, unmissable CTA, and a simple three-step visual representation of how Unbounce's solution works. The copy also clearly states that Unbounce is primarily aimed at marketers (a clear indication of understanding and appealing to a highly specific target audience), as well as the fact that users can create mobile-responsive landing pages, which itself addresses a very specific need or concern for some marketers.

Great stuff all around.

4. Slack - Be More Productive at Work with Less Effort

The world seems to be divided into two types of people; those who love Slack, and those who haven't tried it yet. For the uninitiated, Slack is a workplace productivity and messaging app. It's deceptively simple to use, yet robust enough for large teams working on complex projects (as evidenced by Slack's very clever inclusion of the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab example on the homepage), so what sets Slack apart from the thousands of other messaging and productivity apps?
Slack's value proposition, focusing on credibility and productivity
Essentially, Slack distills its value proposition in the example above - it makes users' "working lives simpler, more pleasant, and more productive." The NASA JPL example is also very clever in that it subtly implies that if it's good enough for large teams of scientists at NASA - the kind of people who put robots on other planets - then it's good enough for anyone.

However, while this might seem like the value prop of virtually every productivity app on the market, Slack has several advantages that support its core value prop of making collaboration simpler.

For one, few (if any) other productivity apps boast as many integrations as Slack does. This means that its almost guaranteed to fit into just about any company's existing communications workflow. It's this diversity of supported apps that has helped Slack almost singlehandedly dominate the workplace productivity space.
"Slack: All your tools in one place."
Simplicity is also a core theme at the heart of Slack's value proposition. After all, it's hard to get more done if the app that promises to help you do that is a pain in the ass to use. The premise of "find anything, anywhere, anytime, from any device" is another selling point Slack users routinely evangelize about, and for good reason.
"Slack: Search your entire archive."
I won't dissect every aspect of Slack, but suffice to say that the messaging and positioning of Slack essentially addresses every common pain point you can think of about collaborating with others at work, then simplifies it in an almost irresistible way. To newcomers, it may even seem too good to be true, which is arguably why Slack has become so insanely popular (and helped the company achieve a breathtaking $3.8 billion valuation). Reading over Slack's website, you can almost feel the sighs of relief that Slack promises.

Slack's mantra of "Be Less Busy" isn't just a catchy slogan - it's the company's value proposition neatly summarized into three beautifully simple words.

5. Digit - Save Money Without Thinking About It

The world of personal finance is another ruthlessly competitive space, and there are tens of thousands of apps designed to help people manage their money more effectively. However, few have as good a value proposition as Digit, a relatively new service that helps users "save money, without thinking about it."
Digit's value proposition, offering hands-off savings
Digit allows users to securely connect their bank accounts to the Digit service, which then algorithmically examines users' spending habits and regular expenses. It then begins to "optimize" users' accounts to squirrel a little money away here and there into an FDIC-guaranteed savings account, from which users can withdraw their savings at any time.

The key differentiator of Digit from other savings apps is that the process is entirely automated. Users literally don't have to do a thing for Digit to start putting money into a saving account; a few bucks here, a few bucks there, and before you know it, you've got a decent amount put away for a rainy day, all the while maintaining sufficient funds for regular outgoing expenses to be taken care of. It's actually kind of amazing.

Saving can be a major financial hurdle for many people, especially those on reduced or limited incomes. By automating the entire process, Digit offers users a completely hands-off solution to saving. It's not for everyone - but then again, no product, service, or app is - but it is unique, and its value proposition makes this clear.

6. LessAccounting - Bookkeeping, Without the Hassle

For most people (read: people who aren't CPAs or accounting professionals), bookkeeping is a pain in the ass. It's confusing, time-consuming, and generally an utterly miserable experience, even if your business' books are relatively simple ( more emotional words and phrases here). That's what makes LessAccounting's value proposition so compelling.
LessAccounting's value proposition, offering improved quality of life
LessAccounting's entire premise is built upon simplifying accounting and bookkeeping, and its value proposition is reinforced throughout the site. The homepage's tagline - "Make your life easier with our accounting software" - makes this immediately apparent, and as you navigate through the site, you're constantly reminded of the product's value proposition, namely that no other bookkeeping software makes accounting as simple and painless as LessAccounting.

Although LessAccounting is available for larger businesses, it's primarily aimed at small operations such as freelancers and small-business owners, and its messaging reflects this at every stage of the funnel. From blog posts that answer questions that newcomers to accounting are likely to have, to case studies featuring small-business owners praising the product's simplicity and ease of use, every aspect of LessAccounting's messaging focuses on how much easier and simpler your life will be by using LessAccounting.

7. CrazyEgg - Website Behavior Tracking at an Unbeatable Price

Figuring out precisely how people are using your website is a major challenge for many businesses. You might think you have a good idea about your users' behavior, but without hard, actionable data, you can't know for certain. That's where CrazyEgg comes in.
"CrazyEgg: Want to make your site better?"
CrazyEgg is an analytical tool that allows users to view heatmaps of how people are actually interacting with a website. Users can see cursor movements, scroll depth, and all sorts of other cool behavioral tracking features that let them really understand how people are interacting with their website.

However, CrazyEgg is far from the only player in the behavioral tracking space - so what's the value proposition? That no other service provides more functionality and insight for a better price, with as little hassle, as CrazyEgg does.
"CrazyEgg: Like a pair of x-ray glasses"
The smart folks at CrazyEgg realize that not everyone who visits their site will be familiar with the concept of heatmaps or behavioral tracking, so they provide visitors with a friendly, accessible overview of CrazyEgg's features to simplify what the product does. If you scroll beyond this overview, you get to the real meat of CrazyEgg's value proposition:
CrazyEgg's value proposition, answering intuitive FAQ's with active diction
The site lists all the things users can do with CrazyEgg, cleverly using active verbs to show visitors how much better their lives will be by using it. This list tempts would-be users with the prospects of making their budgets go farther, advocating for site changes using actionable data, making testing and analytics easier and more efficient, as well as the promise of more conversions and heightened engagement.

It then goes on to highlight the ease of use with which CrazyEgg can be implemented, emphasizing the fact that there is virtually zero technical overhead for using the product, before stating another core aspect of its value proposition, namely that it's the most fully featured product of its type in its price range.

When you consider the overall flow of this page, it's very clever indeed. It uses simple, accessible language and poses a question designed to pique users' interest, before providing a clear overview of what you can do with it, and then seals the deal by highlighting the central elements of the value proposition.

Nailing your own value prop

Hopefully these value proposition examples have given you some ideas of how you can improve or clarify your business' value proposition. You don't need an immense marketing or design budget to put what makes your business the best front-and-center in your messaging - just a little focus and a moment or two to consider your site from the perspective of your users.

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7 of the Best Value Proposition Examples We've Ever Seen

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Your value proposition is arguably the most important element of your overall marketing messaging. Check out seven of the best unique value proposition examples we've ever seen.

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Strategyzer's Value Proposition Canvas Explained

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You may think this is an easy question to answer. You're a designer - of course you know what your company's value proposition is.

But when I ask designers this question, I'm met with a variety of different answers - and it's likely many are made up on the spot. Responses range from coherent to incomprehensible. Every now and then, there's even awkward, prolonged silence.

So what's missing? How is it that a company's value proposition isn't clearly understood by the people responsible for surfacing said value to customers?
"A strong value proposition is the foundation of great design."
The answer is a lack of design. Many organizations actually skip the process of designing their value proposition.

This is a mistake. A big one.

Don't make this mistake. Use this article as a way to understand the tools and tactics at your disposal. By using these tools and tactics, you'll design more compelling value propositions.

Let's start simple.

According to Wikipedia, "a value proposition is a promise of value to be delivered, communicated, and acknowledged. It is also a belief from the customer about how value (benefit) will be delivered, experienced and acquired."

For me, this definition doesn't cut it. To keep things on track, let's use my definition:

A value proposition is a product, service, or experience that creates desired gains or relieves existing pains.

To design a compelling value proposition, you must understand the desired gains and existing pains of the people you aim to serve. Through this process you may also uncover unexpected gains.

This isn't always easy, so let's start getting practical.

At >X, we define design as the systematic process guiding attempts to solve complex human problems. Value Proposition Design is a subset of this overarching discipline.

Thanks to people like Alexander Osterwalder and Steve Blank, useful tools have emerged to support designers in their search for the ultimate value proposition.

Osterwalder's work on Business Model Ontology and Business Model Generation gave birth to the Business Model Canvas.

Business leaders all over the world now rely on the Business Model Canvas and adaptations like the Lean Canvas. In a simple format, they describe how a company delivers its value proposition/s to its target customers.

Though it's used by business stakeholders, the Business Model Canvas can and should form part of the design process. It's a useful tool to help highlight the business value of the design function. It can also help you define the economics of design.

In practical terms, this canvas can be used to:

Design hypotheses

Conduct tests

Communicate with stakeholders and;

Inform strategic priorities

Programs like Steve Blank's Lean LaunchPad ( used by the National Science Foundation) and organizations like LaunchPad Central have systemized this process. The results speak for themselves.

Image via Strategyzer.

By using the canvas, organizations can measure progress through learning velocity and other key metrics. This supports the desire for data-driven decision-making, even before the money rolls in.

Osterwalder introduced this concept at depth in his book Value Proposition Design. The Value Proposition Canvas helps teams deepen their understanding of target customers. Solutions to the desired gains, existing pains, and Jobs-To-Be-Done of customers are also designed and tested.

Let's look closely at the canvas.

Customer jobs
The Value Proposition Canvas forces you to uncover and document real customer jobs. This helps deepen your understanding of causality and the situational context in which someone might choose to hire or fire your value proposition. This moment is often referred to as " the switch."

Existing behavior versus new behavior. Thanks to Jobstobedone.org.

Existing pains
Here you uncover and document what frustrates your target customers. You detail what creates friction. You also learn about the things they're desperate to solve. This helps you get specific.

Journey mapping and the Jobs-To-Be-Done technique can be particularly useful here.

Desired gains
Revealed preference can be a powerful indicator. But this type of analysis of existing behavior won't always cut it. Sometimes inferential analysis of your quant is a better starting point. From here you can conduct a series of tests to validate what you think you know.

Regardless of your preferred approach, this helps refine your design focus.

Tip: Our team often maps insights on the "customer profile" side of the canvas to the 30 Elements of Customer Value. We find this gives us greater clarity and focus as it relates to the value we're trying to create.

Image: Bain & Company Inc via hbr.org.

Pain relievers
Here you document how your product or service could relieve the existing customer pains.

Gain creators
Here you document how your product or service could fulfil the desired customer gains.

Tip: Don't describe features. Rather, describe ways in which the desired outcome (relieved pain, desired gain or JTBD) could be fulfilled.

Example: It might take me a huge amount of time to manually import files into InVision. I then also have to check to ensure the click-path hasn't changed. This makes me feel inefficient and puts me under a lot of pressure from my peers. This is my pain.

But what if I could automatically sync design files without ever leaving Sketch? This might relieve my pain.

Products and services
This is how your value proposition manifests itself. Here you get specific.

Example: Craft Sync by InVision

Attaining "fit"

Image via Strategyzer.

The purpose of the canvas and value proposition design exercise is to establish fit.

Strategyzer defines fit as, "... when your value map meets your customer profile-when your products and services produce pain relievers and gain creators that match one or more of the jobs, pains and gains that are important to your customer."

Validating fit early reduces risk. You're less likely to design something no one wants. And with tools like InVision, you can test various iterations of a "potential" product or service quickly and cost-effectively as part this process.
"Validate fit early - you'll be less likely to design something no one wants."
Validating fit also starts informing the business model canvas. These 2 tools feed and inform each other. This is how the process really starts coming together.

Here's an example of 7 great value propositions.

Design is a process-oriented discipline. Value Proposition Design is no different.

Osterwalder's company, Strategyzer, does a brilliant job of outlining practical processes for use of the tools I've described.

Image via Strategyzer.

What you'll probably note is that this isn't all that different to what you're currently doing. You already conduct research to reveal preference, uncover pains, and understand customer jobs. You then frame hypotheses that inform which experiments you'll conduct. You measure these experiments with the metrics that matter. You feed insights back into the process. You then go on to re-frame your hypotheses, re-frame your design, and start all over again.

Image: >X.

So, this isn't completely new. The tools and approach, once incorporated into your existing design process, simply enable you to focus on designing and validating value propositions that fit. Value propositions that matter.

Related: 7 free resources every product designer needs

These value propositions inform how your company's products and services manifest themselves in the market.

A strong value proposition is the foundation of great design. Use the tools above to embed Value Proposition Design into your design process.

To get started now, you can read Value Proposition Design. You could even take Udacity's free course, How to Build a Startup. I suggest giving both a try. If they help you as much as they helped me, it'll be well worth it.

If you want to talk specifically about how these tools can become a core part of your organization's design function, get in touch directly.

This article originally featured on the InVision Blog.

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You may think this is an easy question to answer. You're a designer - of course you know what your company's value proposition is. But when I ask designers this question, I'm met with a variety of different answers - and it's likely many are made up on the spot.

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Strategyzer's Value Proposition Canvas Explained

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Strategyzer's Value Proposition Canvas Explained

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How to Apply Lean Startup Ideas to Achieve Product-Market Fit

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How to Apply Lean Startup Ideas to Achieve Product-Market Fit

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Published 8/22/2015

Chances are you've heard of the Lean Startup movement, which aims to improve how companies develop new products and services. Lean Startup has such wide appeal because many people know how difficult it is to build a successful product. Everyone is familiar with the sobering statistics about the high percentage of new products that fail.

Product-Market Fit

Product-market fit is one of the most important Lean Startup concepts, yet it is also one of the least well defined.

Marc Andreesen coined the term product-market fit in a blog post where he said, "Product-market fit means being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market." This explanation helps you understand what product-market fit is at a high level, but isn't really actionable. You can find many articles that mention product-market fit, but they don't provide detailed guidance on how to achieve it.

The Lean Product Playbook by Dan Olsen provides detailed guidance on how to achieve product-market fit. The book describes the Product-Market Fit Pyramid: an actionable model that defines product-market fit using five key components. In this hierarchical model, each of the components is a layer of the pyramid and is dependent on the levels below it. From bottom to top, the five layers of the Product-Market Fit Pyramid are: your target customer, your customer's underserved needs, your value proposition, your feature set, and your user experience.

In the process of trying to define and build a successful product, you will be forming and revising hypotheses in all five of these areas.

The Lean Product Process

The Lean Product Process-also described in The Lean Product Playbook -is an iterative, easy-to-follow process based on the Product-Market Fit Pyramid.

This process guides you sequentially through each layer of the pyramid from the bottom to the top. It helps you articulate and test your key hypotheses for each of the five components of product-market fit.

The Lean Product Process consists of six steps:

1. Determine your target customer

2. Identify underserved customer needs

3. Define your value proposition

4. Specify your Minimum Viable Product (MVP) feature set

5. Create your MVP prototype

6. Test your MVP with customers
Step 1: Determine your target customer
It all begins with target customers who will ultimately decide how well your product meets their needs. You should use market segmentation to get specific about who your target customer is. Personas are a great way to describe your target customer so that everyone on the product team understands for whom they should be designing and building the product.

You may not have a precise definition of your target customer at the outset: that's okay. You just need to start with a high-level hypothesis and then revise it as you learn and iterate.
Step 2: Identify underserved customer needs
After forming your hypothesis about your target customers, the next step is to understand their needs. As you try to create value for customers, you want to identify the specific needs that correspond to a good market opportunity.

For example, you probably don't want to enter a market where customers are extremely happy with how well the existing solutions meet their needs. When you develop a new product or improve an existing product, you want to address customer needs that aren't adequately met: their "underserved" needs. Customers are going to judge your product in relation to the alternatives, so the relative degree to which your product meets their needs depends on the competitive landscape.
Step 3: Define your value proposition
Your value proposition is your plan for how your product will meet customer needs better than the alternatives. Out of all the potential customer needs your product could address, which ones will you focus on with your product? Steve Jobs said, "People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on.

But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I'm actually as proud of the things we haven't done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things."

You need to figure out how your product will be differentiated from competitive products. How will your product outperform the others? What unique features of your product will delight customers? This is the essence of product strategy.
Step 4: Specify your MVP feature set
Once you are clear on your value proposition, you need to specify what functionality your minimum viable product will include. You don't want to spend too much time and effort toiling away only to find out later that customers don't like the product you've built. The MVP approach is aimed at building only what you need to create enough value in the eyes of your target customer to help validate that you are heading in the right direction. Customers may end up telling you that your MVP lacks an important piece of functionality. Or they may tell you that they wouldn't use a particular feature that you decided to include in your MVP. The goal is to iterate until you have an MVP that customers agree is viable.
Step 5: Create your MVP prototype
In order to test your MVP hypotheses with customers, you need to show them a version of your product so they can give you feedback on it. You will need to apply user experience (UX) design to bring your feature set to life for your customers. While you could build a live, working version of your MVP, it's usually faster and more prudent to create an MVP prototype. A prototype is a representation of your product that you create without having to build your actual product.

Prototypes can vary in fidelity-the level of detail to which they resemble the final product-and interactivity-the degree to which the user can interact with the prototype compared to the final product. A hand sketch of your product (on paper or a whiteboard) would be low fidelity and low interactivity. For web and mobile products, medium-fidelity wireframes and high-fidelity mockups are frequently used.

You can use a set of high-fidelity mockups of your product's pages/screens to create a clickable/tappable prototype. Prototyping tools (such as InVision) make it easy to specify clickable/tappable hot spots and link them to other pages/screens. Such prototypes can usually simulate the user experience of the final product with enough fidelity and interactivity to obtain valuable feedback from customers. Prototypes are a powerful way to look before you leap.
Step 6: Test your MVP with customers
Once you have your MVP prototype ready, it's time to test it with customers. It's important in this step to ensure the people from whom you are soliciting feedback are in your target market. If you don't, you risk receiving customer feedback that can send you iterating in the wrong direction. A screener-a short survey to ensure research participants have the attributes of your target customer-helps achieve this goal. You then schedule time to speak with each customer one-on-one.

During the user test you want to carefully observe what the customer says and does as they use the prototype. You should also ask clarifying questions when appropriate to gain deeper learning. Asking questions is an important skill to gain the most value from user tests. A good moderator will avoid asking leading questions such as, "That was easy, wasn't it?" Compared to a non-leading question, a leading question biases the response from the customer. A good interviewer will also avoid asking closed questions such as, "Do you like that feature?" Such questions mandate a yes or no response from the user, which doesn't provide much learning. Instead, you should ask open-ended questions such as "Could you please tell me what you thought of that feature?" Non-leading, open-ended questions give customers latitude in their answers and also encourage them to tell you more.

It's beneficial to conduct user tests in batches or waves. A wave of five to eight users strikes a good balance between too few (where you risk not detecting some issues) and too many (where there is repetition and low incremental value of additional tests). At the end of the wave, you want to look across all the feedback you've received, both positive and negative. You want to identify patterns of similar feedback from multiple customers and prioritize any customer concerns that you've uncovered so you can address them.

Iterate to Product-Market Fit

The Lean Product Process is an iterative process. After analyzing the customer feedback in step 6, you want to revise your hypotheses based on what you learned and loop back to an earlier step in the process. The feedback will determine which step you should return to next. If you only need to improve your UX design, then you can just go back to step 5. But if your hypotheses about feature set, value proposition, underserved customer needs, or target customer need to change, then you would return to the earliest step that requires revision and proceed from there.

In each iteration through the process, you will end up revising your MVP prototype, which you test again with a new wave of target customers. From one iteration to the next, you hope to see an increase in positive feedback from customers and a decrease in negative feedback. You may find that you just can't seem to make much progress despite trying several iterations. If that happens, you should take a step back and revisit your hypotheses. You may conclude that in order to achieve higher levels of product-market fit you need to pivot (change one or more of your major hypotheses).

Ideally, after repeating the Lean Product Process for additional waves, you iterate to an MVP prototype that customers have no negative feedback on, consider easy to use, and find very valuable. At that point, you have validated your key hypotheses and have designed a product with product market fit. You should then proceed with investing the resources required to build the product. Following this process should give you a high degree of confidence that when you launch your product, customers will use it and find it valuable.

The Lean Product Playbook by Dan Olsen provides additional in-depth advice on how to apply Lean Startup ideas and achieve product-market fit. Dan Olsen is a Lean Startup and product management consultant, speaker, and author. At Olsen Solutions, Dan works with CEOs and product leaders to help them build great products and strong product teams, often as interim VP of Product. He has worked with companies large and small on a wide variety of web and mobile products. Dan's clients include Facebook, Box, Microsoft, Medallia, and One Medical Group.

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From Lean Manufacturing to Lean Product Development

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Published 8/22/2015 Chances are you've heard of the Lean Startup movement, which aims to improve how companies develop new products and services. Lean Startup has such wide appeal because many people know how difficult it is to build a successful product. Everyone is familiar with the sobering statistics about the high percentage of new products that fail.

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We launched BuddyUp in 2013, the summer before my Senior year. The concept was simple: fill the void left by Facebook by offering a private social network for university students. We evaluated the market and decided to position the product as part of a student retention strategy, helping universities reduce their dropout rates.

Over the course of the next 4 years I grew the company, employing dozens of people - designers, developers, sales people, account managers, marketing gurus, QA people, brand ambassadors. We outgrew office after office. Together my co-founder Steven and I engineered a great culture, developed cutting-edge products, generated meaningful revenue, raised capital from high-profile investors, made front pages, grew a user base and sparked acquisition interest from some of the hottest companies in the industry. Then failed.

There are lots of reasons we failed. More importantly are the reasons we didn't succeed: Thinking Small and Lack of Product/Market Fit.
Thinking Small
We tried scaffolding our way to self-sufficiency by chasing 'easy money.' Although our core passion was students we decided that selling ourselves to universities would help demonstrate early revenue (and thereby help us land additional investment). The plan was to earn enough revenue through enterprise sales that we could pivot (like MailChimp) and start building what we REALLY wanted to build: a direct-to-consumer social network. I remember thinking 'how hard could it be to land 10 contracts for $50,000?'

It's fucking hard.

We compromised our vision. We failed.

Product/Market Fit
Our second death blow came from what legendary VC Marc Andreessen considers "the only thing that matters" - product/market fit.

Making it further than most, we successfully ✓ built a product that people actually used and ✓ generated revenue repeatedly. Unfortunately, in the time allotted by capital we failed to find a true product/market fit.

If you haven't read Andreessen's 2007 blog post, it's internet gold: http://pmarchive.com/guide_to_startups_part4.html

He suggests that the life of any startup can be divided into two parts: before product/market fit (call this "BPMF") and after product/market fit ("APMF"). In the case of BuddyUp we assumed every university with a dropout problem would feel compelled to consider our solution. We assumed product/market fit and ignored the evidence. Frankly, we even ignored our first customer.

Oregon State University's online campus (Ranked #5 in the U.S.) wrote us a $50,000 check before we even had our shoes on. Had we known that we were still looking for a product/market fit we wouldn't have tried to scale our sales efforts prematurely. Instead we would have sat down, rolled up our sleeves and delivered OSU the product they so desperately wanted. Online learning is booming and it would have been much easier to crawl up a narrow vertical market. But nah.

We didn't prioritize product/market fit. We failed.

Reflection
The past 4 years have been a wonderful opportunity to learn and to hone my chops as an entrepreneur and learn about myself as a human being. This article might be about failure, but there were a TON of things we did right to stay alive for 4 years and achieve the traction we did. I'm proud of myself and proud of my team.

Thanks to this experience I've established relationships all across the world, benefited from SO MUCH MENTORSHIP and experienced the joys of growth as well as the pain and heartache of failure. I've learned that intelligence, a good smile, hard work and willpower will get you far, but not all the way. You still need a great team (which costs money), a great product (which takes time) and to find a product/market fit (which takes both). Oh yeah, and there's zero room for compromise or half measures.

I am deeply grateful to everyone who gave me the opportunity to serve and I am excited for what comes next.

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From Hot → Not in 2 Easy Steps - Brian Forrester - Medium

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We launched BuddyUp in 2013, the summer before my Senior year. The concept was simple: fill the void left by Facebook by offering a private social network for university students. We evaluated the market and decided to position the product as part of a student retention strategy, helping universities reduce their dropout rates.

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Value Proposition Canvas Explained by Alex Osterwalder

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Alexander Osterwalder: Mapping Customer Pains to Value Proposition | Stanford eCorner

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Business model innovator Alexander Osterwalder lays out reasons to map a product or service's value proposition with the actual pains customers face. Using building blocks from his business model canvas framework, Osterwalder maps the relationship and discusses, with interviewer Steve Blank, how value is created.

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The Value Proposition Canvas Instruction Manual

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The Value Proposition Canvas Instruction Manual

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The Value Proposition Canvas makes explicit how you are creating value for your customers. It helps you to design products and services your customers want.

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10 Characteristics of Great Value Propositions Checklist

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10 Characteristics of Great Value Propositions Checklist

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Book Excerpt - Value Proposition Design 

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Book Excerpt - Value Proposition Design 

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PPTX Template - The Value Proposition Canvas 

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PPTX Template - The Value Proposition Canvas 

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Amazon's Value Proposition: Never Run Out Of Toilet Paper!